Welcome to December! My morning train WFH reads, blessedly free from the SBF dumpster fire interview:
• A year of pain: investors struggle in a new era of higher rates: Twelve months after Jay Powell called an end to super-cheap money, fund managers are still adjusting to a very different environment. (Financial Times Alphaville)
• A Missing Piece of the SBF Puzzle: In a range of interviews and Twitter threads (see links and excerpts below), SBF explained that he approached financial decisions with little or no aversion to risk. That’s a valid personal choice, but it’s highly unusual. In our own experience, we’ve never met anyone who made important financial decisions consistent with being anywhere in the ballpark of zero risk aversion. (Elm) see also Why the Investing Pros Were Such Suckers for FTX: In the spectacular collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange, millions of fingers already seem to be pointing at Sam Bankman-Fried, the frizzy-haired boy wonder who founded the firm, drove it to a valuation of $32 billion and then took it into bankruptcy. (Wall Street Journal)
• Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich? The question of why some countries join the developed world while others remain in poverty has vexed economists for decades. What makes it so hard to answer? (Asterisk)
• Here’s what employers are cutting instead of your job: You may get to keep your job, but you might lose your Zoom and your desk. (Vox)
• Robot Landlords Are Buying Up Houses: Companies with deep resources are outsourcing management to apps and algorithms, putting home ownership further out of reach. (Vice)
• Anti-Woke Republicans Aren’t Making Business Sense on Climate: The GOP’s opposition to meaningful climate policy is increasingly at odds with corporate pragmatism. (Bloomberg)
• Is China heading toward another Tiananmen Square moment? How a deadly fire in Xinjiang ignited a nationwide protest against zero-covid in China. (Grid)
• When Visiting Michelangelo’s David, She Brings a Duster: The revered statue in Italy is not going to dust itself. That’s where Eleonora Pucci comes in. (New York Times)
• ‘It made me a pop star – and I’m crap at being a pop star’: KT Tunstall on Suddenly I See (The Guardian)
• Naked volunteers pose for Tunick artwork on Bondi Beach: Some 2,500 naked volunteers have posed in the early morning light on Sydney’s Bondi Beach for an artwork designed to raise awareness of skin cancer. (BBC)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Luis Berruga, CEO of Global X. The firm manages $40 billion dollars across nearly 100 thematic ETFs.
Why America Doesn’t Have Enough EV Charging Stations
Source: Wall Street Journal
Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.
